


Story Telling Man

by BarPurple



Series: Writer's Block [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Future Fic, Gen, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 23:38:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7594804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarPurple/pseuds/BarPurple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Out To Ever Nation - Jorn</p>
    </blockquote>





	Story Telling Man

**Author's Note:**

> Out To Ever Nation - Jorn

Why couldn’t he forget what he was supposed to be? Henry stared at the half empty glass in his hand and let himself dwell on the past. It had been almost ten years since he’d left Storybrooke and about the same time since he’d found that even in the World Without Magic the power of the Author still held true. He couldn’t escape his destiny even in a world that didn’t believe in magic. He had tried so hard to put who and what he was behind him, but it still found him. 

All magic comes with a price dearie

Henry snorted and threw back his drink. He set the empty glass carefully on the bar and gestured to the barmaid for another. She approached with the bottle of vodka.

“Are you sure you can handle another?”

It was so close to a phrase that had meant so much to one of his mothers’ that Henry had to laugh. He bit his lip and forced himself to hold back the long ago response of a pirate. Instead he snapped out; “What do you think?”

The barmaid gave him a hard stare that Henry met without wavering. Finally she shrugged and poured his double shot.

“I think you can take it, but I’m not sure you should.”

She walked away before Henry could respond. Probably for the best, that was the most interaction he’d had with another person in weeks. If he’d talked to her any longer he would be able to see her story and that always made things complicated. These past ten years he’d been a hermit, avoiding any meaningful contact with people. It was impossible to be around people when you could see how their ending would come about. He’d given up believing in ‘Happily Ever After’ long before he’d left Storybrooke. Being born of a line of heroes and villains would destroy hope in that nonsense forever. The thing is by the end, just before he left, he wasn’t sure anymore who was who. Rumplestiltskin had saved the town as many times as the heroes had in Henry’s short life. Snow White and Prince Charming had been the cause of more evil than he wanted to think about. His Moms were products of a century’s worth of manipulation, but that didn’t excuse them from the problems they both created. Henry raked his fingernails across his scalp and refused to think about his biological father or the step dads that had come into his life. None of them were heroes, but they’d not been outright bad guys.

Why did the lines have to be so blurred? On occasion when he was in a cheap motel in the middle of nowhere the only thing on TV would be Disney films; it was all so black and white in those. Henry would either snap the TV off or, if he was drunk enough, watch them. On some level he missed Storybrooke, but that didn’t mean he viewed it through rose tinted spectacles. He knew only too well what life there was, it had cost him his family on more than one occasion, but he hadn’t left until….

He chugged down the vodka and jerked his head at the barmaid for a refill. She frowned a little, but obliged him. He made himself take this one slower; the bar wasn’t great, but it offered more of a distraction than his crappy motel room.

It would have been her birthday today.

That was the problem. That was why he was thinking of the improbable little town he’d grown up in. That was why he was desperately trying to get blind drunk at four in the afternoon. 

Today would have been Violet’s birthday. 

Henry cursed his mind and raised the glass to his lips, ten years since the Fifth Curse, ten years since he proposed, ten years since she died in his arms because he couldn’t save her.

The glass met his lips and the bar froze. Everything was silent for a moment then the jukebox kicked in.

“I was born to be a story telling man, I spread the word across the land.”

Henry lowered the glass and glared at it.

The vodka swirled and rose in to two forms from his past.

_Henry. Henry. We’re sorry. We need you. Please come home._

Henry slammed his hand over the images of his Moms and swore loudly. The noise of the bar started up again, a different tune on the jukebox. He sighed slowly and took a deliberate swig from his glass. The ambient volume was back, but Henry’s heckles still rose at the tapping sound. He refused to look to his left hand side as the newcomer with a cane slid onto the stool next to him. An accented voice, Scottish in this realm Frontlands in a distant place said; “Double whiskey and a double for this gent here.”

Henry threw his drink back and wrapped his fingers around the new glass all without glancing at the man in the well-tailored suit to his left. The barmaid hurried away as Henry snarled out; “I’m not going back.”

His new drinking buddy rolled his glass between his hands.

“I never thought you would.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Curiosity.”

Now Henry turned on his stool and glared at his Grandfather. Rumplestiltskin looked much as he had a decade ago, there was more grey in his hair and he looked thinner than Henry ever remembered him, but the Dark One was basically the same man. Rumple didn’t turn to face him, he just slowly took a drink of his scotch and hissed.

“Never as good as Frontlands firewater, would have thought I would have got a taste for it after all these years.”

Rumple tapped the long fingers of his right hand against the glass and Henry noticed something new. Grandfather was missing his index finger of that hand. Henry screwed his eyes shut against the rising power that tried to tell him how that had happened. Rumple gave a dry laugh.

“See that hasn’t left you then. You still know a story just by looking.”

“I left that life behind the day she died. The power just hasn’t worked that out yet.”

“It never will, Henry my boy. You are what you were born to be and that will never change, no matter how far you run. And trust me, I’m an expert in the futility of running away.”

“I’ve been doing pretty well.” Henry bit his tongue as the lie burnt it. He’d been doing anything but well, but he hadn’t let that stop him, he’d put Storybrooke in his rear-view mirror and hadn’t so much as glanced over his shoulder since, but he could always feel the looming shadow of the place.

“You have, but the time for running is over. Your destiny is about to catch up with you. The only question is do you want it to find you out here,” Rumple twisted on the stool and brushed his hair back from his face in one smooth movement, Henry gasped at the sight of the scared black hole where his Grandfathers right eye used to be, “Or do you want to come home and face it where Fate prescribed?”

Henry’s tongue rasped as it ran over his dry lips.

“Do I have a choice?”

Rumplestiltskin grinned at him; “Of course Henry, as much as anyone has a choice.”

They looked each other in the eye for a moment before Henry downed his drink and stood up.

“Well? Come on. Long drive to Maine.”

As they walked out of the bar the jukebox stuttered and played a random burst of the wrong song.

“A voice of hope, the chant for peace, that’s my way, that’s my release.”


End file.
